IOPN Journals (Illinois Open Publishing Network)
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Power and Controversy: Controversy surrounding Material Challenges at a Public Library
Get PDFThis case study investigates material challenges in a public library system, a growing concern in the United States due to the politicization of topics like gender, sexuality, and race. Material challenges involve requests to remove or restrict library materials, with reported cases skyrocketing to 1,247 in 2023. These challenges not only create public controversy but also highlight disagreements within public library governance. In most cases, governance involves librarians, a board of trustees, and community members, but little research has explored disagreements among these actors.
This study examines a specific public library system experiencing controversy around material challenges, focusing on the distribution and exercise of power among different actors. Data was collected through interviews, recordings, and documents, and analyzed using thematic coding, a meta-network framework, and a chronology of disagreement events. The study identifies legal authority, rights, and networks as the main resources mobilized in the controversy. Legal authority shapes the issues of disagreement, while rights and networks are used to counter this authority and influence the controversy\u27s continuation.
A model of resource mobilization in public governance controversy is proposed, highlighting the unequal distribution of legal authority due to a governance schema based on majoritarianism. Actors without legal authority use other resources to challenge this, which eventually continues the controversy. The study suggests that leveling legal authority could mitigate public controversy and contributes to understanding public library governance during disputes. It offers insights for library practitioners and community members on resolving such controversies effectively
Return Migration Experiences Portrayed in K-pop Literature: Somewhere Only We Know and Comeback: A K-pop Novel
Get PDFKorean American youth often turn to Korean popular culture, such as K-pop, to claim their cultural space in the U.S., where they are marginalized. These ethnic media influence some to return to their ancestral homeland in search of racial belonging and ethnic identity. Nevertheless, literature and media rarely address the complexities and difficulties of such return migration. Hence, in this study, I utilize two K-pop young adult books—published in the United States, not Korea—to analyze the experiences of return migration and identity negotiation of return migrants in Korea through Korean American K-pop stars and their Korean American love interests
Arguing Book Bans: A Critical Analysis of Public Forums at School Board Meetings
Get PDFTo examine and define issues related to current book banning efforts, I first identified a foundation for this study by discussing the importance of book collections, library origins and resistance to change, and current social and political issues influencing libraries. Through a directed content analysis, I utilized Critical Race Theory’s tenets of whiteness as property and counter-storytelling to analyze a school district’s board meeting public forums. This method and theoretical lens provided understanding for an oppressive library ideology that is promoted at school board meetings. School librarians should instead choose to enact a liberatory library ideology within their libraries
Everyone’s Culture is for the Children: Encountering and Contextualizing the Rhetorical Strategies of Book Banners
Get PDFCommentators Stanley Kurtz and Christopher Rufo have been instrumental in developing the rhetoric used in the movement to remove books by and about BIPOC and LGBTQ+ people from school and public libraries. This article examines the rhetorical strategies used by Kurtz and Rufo, including the use of coded language which alludes to racial and sexual identity and the deployment of academic methods such as Foucauldian genealogy to misread and decontextualize efforts to make libraries more diverse and inclusive. This analysis suggests that book challenge campaigns can be understood as challenges to the validity of diversity, equity, and inclusion as values for public institutions such as libraries, and that libraries must counter these campaigns with a forceful defense of their commitment to diversity. In order to explore ways of expressing that commitment, and as a counterpoint to the strategic deployment of parents in book challenge campaigns, this article also includes both personal reflections on my own experience as a parent and an exploration of alternate views of the relationship between culture and childhood. Those reflections take as their inspiration Russell Jones’ famous phrase “Wu-Tang is for the children,” and go on to search for ways of expressing the value of encouraging children to experience our world as it is and to embrace the rich cultures that surround them
I Will Not Be Silent
Get PDFThis op-ed from school librarian Amanda Jones paints a bleak picture of the real-time damage being wrought by what she aptly calls extremist censorship and smear campaigns. Not only are targeted books and the historically marginalized experiences they often contain in the crossfire, librarians and educators who stand against censorship face vilification and threats to their jobs and lives. Jones highlights the crucial role of collaboration as library workers across the LIS field take up the fight to push back and protect their communities\u27 right to read
Book Review: The Early Reception of Manga in the West
Get PDFBook review of art history and manga scholar Martin de la Iglesia\u27s The Early Reception of Manga in the West, published in 2023 by Christian A. Bachmann Verlag Press in Berlin
JAMS@AX24 Conference Report
No full textThe JAMS@AX Academic Symposium, an academic conference inside of Anime Expo 2024, brought together scholars, librarians, educators, and enthusiasts from around the world to explore the academic study of anime, manga, and Japanese culture. The Journal of Anime and Manga Studies partnered with Anime Expo to co-host this conference for the second time following last year’s MechaJAMS symposium, continuing to offer this unique opportunity to delve deeper into the world of Japanese pop culture on a scholarly level. This year, the symposium embraced the “Edo Japan” theme and encouraged presenters to discuss how anime presents Japanese history and culture, especially during this period. The symposium offered a diverse array of panels and presentations that delved into various aspects of anime and manga studies, from historical reinterpretations and cultural critiques to the impact of music and the integration of traditional art forms. This report provides an overview of the key discussions and insights shared during the symposium, highlighting the scholarly contributions and the vibrant exchange of ideas that marked the event
Collaborative Design on a Dime: A Centralized Approach to Implement Videos for Library Outreach and Instruction
Get PDFYale Library launched a collaborative program to publish a suite of video tutorials on YouTube to market centralized library services and collections. This article describes how a library committee came together to design, produce, distribute, and maintain a suite of video tutorials in a large library system in a short time frame with a limited budget. The program’s success enabled the development of an internal immersion program to train library staff to create videos to use in asynchronous and course-integrated instruction
Community Data Curation Curriculum Development
Get PDFThis poster presents the preliminary findings of the two-year project, Community Data Curation Competency, which aims to extend the current understanding of data curation competencies in the context of community data, engage with strategic stakeholders (educators, practitioners, community organizations) in the process of curriculum design, and design a data curation pilot curriculum to fulfill the current gaps in data curation education to include community data curation competencies
Privacy Beyond Intellectual Freedom: Libraries and Digital Self-Sovereignty
Get PDFIn this paper, critical methods are used to develop a tri-part argument surrounding data privacy and its implications on digital self-sovereignty in the context of libraries. First, the introduction is used to expand on the changing landscape of privacy and librarianship in relation to the data collection rife among library vendors. Second, I turn to the philosophy of information to establish how personal data, as personally identifiable information, are integral to the constitution of the self and thus to digital self-sovereignty. Third, Derridean theory is used to explain how a loss of digital self-sovereignty impacts the very possibility of ethical intersubjectivity. The goal of this paper is to challenge assumptions about data privacy, digital self-sovereignty, and the impact on ethical intersubjectivity in the 21st century, thus contributing to the philosophical scaffolding around privacy as a value for librarianship